Today there is a strong feeling among mariners
navigating in harbours, rivers and archipelagos,
that AIS will improve the safety and to a
great extent solve the limitations
of the radar due to the
following AIS capabilities:
◆ ‘Look behind’ a bend in a
channel or behind an island
in the archipelago to detect
the presence of other ships
and identify.
◆ Predict the exact position of a meeting with
another ship in a river or in an archipelago for
instance to avoid narrow areas.
◆ Identify the ship’s port of destination.
◆ Identify the size and the draft of ships in vicinity.
◆ Detect a change in a ship’s heading almost in
real time.
◆ Identify a ferry leaving the shore bank in a
river.
◆ Identify fixed obstacles, like oil rigs, ship
wrecks, dangerous to shipping.
◆ Identify slowly moving targets, like log rafts,sounding arrays etc., which are unable to take
rapid evasive actions.